Mike's Minute: The GDP number is the biggest win for the Government

If you accept that the Government are struggling in the polls, you may well accept the general notion that part of what is driving that is the lack of runs on the board. 

Perhaps an impatience is frustrating some of us. 

We voted to get rid of the last lot on the understanding that things had been wrecked and destroyed, and there was this new lot that were going to put it right. 

The trouble has been, as they have tried to explain, that things like fiscal cliffs were a lot worse than anticipated and the problem with too many voters is we vote and move on, and then when we re-engage, we expect fixes to problems that are more complex than we gave them credit for. 

This Government has announced a lot and changed a lot. But the simple to read “runs on the board” are only starting to trickle through. 

The downturn on crime would be one of them. The police focus on rounding a few people up, so we feel safer on the streets is tangible. 

The targets on emergency housing being met years ahead of schedule is another one. 

Then yesterday the Gross Domestic Product, the GDP, which is surely one of the most important of all. 

It is the economy and the economy is everything. It pays the bills, retires the debt, forks out for the programmes and sets the mood of the nation. 

If you are growing, and as it turns out (thank the good Lord) we are, you are moving forward and moving forward is what gets Governments popular and re-elected. 

Everyone, as in the experts, had the number at anywhere between 0.3% and 0.5%, still importantly in the right direction. 

So the actual figure of 0.7% is better than expected and must be the best of news. 

For a country that has spent more time in recession than virtually anyone, certainly anyone we compare ourselves to in the OECD, this cannot be overstated in terms of importance. 

0.7% surely comes with a sense that there is more where that came from. So maybe, just maybe, we can turn our backs on the dark days, or years, that have dragged this country to places economically it has never really been. 

No, it is not over and, yes, there is much left to do. 

But such a decent and, dare I suggest, better than expected number will tell you that the current Government might have got a grip on the worst of it and turned the tide. 

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